


The Hydra

by calcaneus



Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: Angst, But only in a dream sequence, Death in Childbirth, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 11:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30088095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcaneus/pseuds/calcaneus
Summary: It seemed as if his traumas were like the heads of the hydra – cut off one, and two more would emerge in its place. Letting go of the crippling vow he made to his father had only unveiled even deeper wounds: The knowledge that he would never be fit as a father himself, and the pain of never knowing his mother. For surely that must be the reason behind his current nightmares? His mother’s death in childbirth now feeding his fear of losing Daphne in the same way.The vision from his dream flashed unbidden through his mind. Soft linen sheets soaked with blood, and soft precious skin turned waxy and cold.Hercules had slain the hydra. Would he ever be able to do the same?
Relationships: Daphne Bridgerton/Simon Basset
Kudos: 97





	The Hydra

_The silence that greeted him when he entered Hastings House should have been his first warning. As a boy he had been used to silence – the deep echoes of empty rooms, the hushed voices of servants – but with his marriage life had become akin to a symphony of changing sounds. Clever fingers on a pianoforte, the rustling swish of silk skirts, a soft humming voice in the next room. Best of all; his wife’s laughter. In this new and blessed life he had almost forgot what silence sounded like, and even if he had not, he wouldn’t have been able to remember something like this. For this was a different silence altogether, one tinged with an edge of tragedy._

_Noticing such varying qualities in the sound of a particular silence was far beyond Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings, when he rushed up the stairs towards his wife’s bedchamber._

_Lungs heaving and blood pumping, he reached the final step. What horror might await him at the end of the corridor? When the footman had caught up with him in Hyde Park, he had not waited for an explanation._

_“Your Grace, it’s, it’s the duchess, she… she–” The stammered words had been enough to make him spin his horse around and chase through London as if the devil were at his back._

_Now that desperate feel of urgency was replaced with a growing sense of doom._

_The sight that met him when he burst into the duchess’s room, however, was beyond any hellscape the devil might conjure. The entire world seemed to tilt and spin off its axis. There, in a bed of blood, lay–_

_“Daphne!”_

_Her hair was matted with sweat, the soft pink roses that used to bloom on her cheeks were gone, her eyes closed. Her full pregnant belly seemed misshapen and grotesque._

_He fell to his knees beside the bed and gathered her tenderly in his arms._

_“Daphne… Oh, God, oh God. I’m here, darling. I’m right here. You can wake up now. Open your eyes, my love. Daphne! Daph–”_

_He shook he gently, tilted her head towards him and tried desperately to coerce her to wake up, but to no avail._

_“Your Grace…” The quiet voice of his butler, Jeffries, made Simon realise that he wasn’t alone in the room. He looked away from Daphne for the first time and saw Jeffries, Daphne’s ladies maid and the doctor all looking back at him with pained expressions._

_“What, Jeffries? What?!” Simon’s violent shout sounded harsh and wrong in the quiet of the room, but he didn’t want the silence, the silence meant, it meant…_

_“I’m sorry, Your Grace.” The doctor’s voice was quiet, but unwavering. “We tried everything we could, but it was impossible. Her Grace started haemorrhaging and the blood loss was too large.”_

_“I, I don’t, I d-d-do–“_

_“They’re gone, Your Grace. I am truly sorry.”_

_Simon was suffocating. His wife. His child. Gone._

_“No, no, that’s not, that is_ not _true. She’s, she’s right here. Daphne, darling, look at me, just – Please, my love, please...”_

_He held his wife tight in his arms, buried his face in her neck and sobbed._

Simon startled awake and stared up at the canopy with wild eyes for a few panicked moments before he realised where he was – in his bed at Clyvedon, the sound of Daphne’s steady breaths pulling him back to reality. He turned towards her and took in her rosy cheeks and the soft flutter of her eyelashes. Just a dream. And yet, a dream that could quite easily turn to nightmarish reality.

Simon pushed back Daphne’s bangs and placed just the hint of a kiss on her forehead. Then he left the bed and set off to his study to brood without disturbing his wife.

The light from the flames of the open fireplace shimmered in the rich brocade of his kaftan and got caught in his glass where the brandy kept swirling, swirling, swirling. Simon let out a deep breath and raised the glass to his lips.

It seemed as if his traumas were like the heads of the hydra – cut off one, and two more would emerge in its place. Letting go of the crippling vow he made to his father had only unveiled even deeper wounds: The knowledge that he would never be fit as a father himself, and the pain of never knowing his mother. For surely that must be the reason behind his current nightmares? His mother’s death in childbirth now feeding his fear of losing Daphne in the same way.

The vision from his dream flashed unbidden through his mind. Soft linen sheets soaked with blood, and soft precious skin turned waxy and cold.

Hercules had slain the hydra. Would he ever be able to do the same?

“Simon?”

He closed his eyes and felt his muscles soften.

Bare feet on hardwood floors and a warm hand at the nape of his neck. Simon turned and looked up at his wife, his heart squeezing in a potent mix of pain and wonder. Standing as she was, illuminated by the warm glow from the fireplace, she could not have been anymore different from the hellish vision of his nightmares. Placing his hands on her hips, he drew her close and rested his forehead against her midriff.

“I wish you would tell me what troubles you, my love.” Her soft words were accompanied by equally soft hands, sliding trough his dark hair and scratching at his scalp.

“I know.”

“But you’re not going to.” It was an assertion, not a question.

“Not tonight.”

Daphne seemed to be considering. Then she slid her hands to his cheeks and turned his face towards her. “Very well then. Will you not come back to bed, at least?”

Turning his head, Simon pressed a warm kiss against the inside of her wrist. When he looked up at her again, something tender was playing at the corner of her mouth.

“Of course.”

Daphne slipped beneath the bedclothes as soon as they returned to their room, but Simon took his time. Banked the fire, blew out the candles, put away his kaftan. By the time he joined Daphne in bed and gathered her close in his arms, her breath had started to even and she was tittering on the edge of sleep. The instant calm that always came with the warmth of his wife’s skin against his began to wash over him, but something kept him from sleep.

“Daphne?” His voice was a mere whisper against her forehead. His lips so close, they pressed against her skin with the movement of each syllable.

“Hmm?

“How did Hercules slay the hydra?”

“What?” Simon could feel a confused wrinkle forming on her brow.

“The hydra, the water-monster with a thousand heads, how did Hercules kill it?”

“I believe it was nine heads, and didn’t you go to Oxford?” Her voice had a touch of the prim young miss who had accused him of presumptuous and rakish behaviour upon their first acquaintance. He couldn’t help but grin and answer with a smart remark.

“I studied mathematics, not the classics.”

“Even so.”

“Won’t you tell me?” He pulled back, and tipped up her chin, so that she might properly see his pleading eyes. “Please?”

Daphne drew in a deep breath. “I only know the version from Apollodorus. My governess would not let me read Ovid.” She sounded indignant even now, as if the disagreement on proper reading material had occurred yesterday, and not years ago when she was still in the schoolroom.

Simon couldn’t resist teasing her. “And rightly so – Much too sensuous for a young lady.”

“I thought you were not familiar with the classics, Your Grace?” Her display of prudish annoyance was utterly adorable.

“Well…” Simon raised his eyebrow and felt a rakish grin split his face.

Daphne narrowed her eyes. “Of course you would only know the, the–”

“The what?” challenged Simon.

“The scandalous parts!” She blurted the words in a quick mix of accusation and embarrassment. Despite Simon’s persistent endeavours, there was still much of the innocent left in Daphne, evidenced quite clearly by the hot blush now travelling from the tops of her breasts to her face. Simon rolled on top of her, and chased the spreading warmth with his lips. First her cheeks, then her mouth, her neck, the delicate skin of her collarbones.

“I believe you must mean the titillating parts,” he whispered against the underside of her breast.

“The arousing.” A bite to her neck.

“The tantalizing.” A brush of her nose with his.

“The erotic.” His hot breath at her ear.

“Mmm.” Daphne arched her back and gripped his shoulders tightly.

Heroes and monsters momentarily forgotten, Simon set about another key element of ancient culture – the worshipping of the goddess. But just as he had raised Daphne’s nightdress to her waist and slowly inched his hand up towards the inside of her thigh, she grabbed his wrist and halted his progress.

“Simon!”

“What?” His attempt at innocence was pitiful indeed.

“Do you wish to hear the story or not?” Daphne however, played the unaffected ingénue to perfection, and it was quite obvious, that she was toying with him – and enjoying it too. The challenging raise of her eyebrows and the hint of a smirk. His duchess had gained the upper hand.

“Of course. Forgive me, Your Grace. I got… distracted.”

“Indeed.”

She made him sit up with his back against the headboard, while she herself settled in as though she were a member of Parliament, preparing to give the speech of a lifetime, or one of his professors at Oxford, imparting great wisdom.

“As the second of his twelve labours, the hero Hercules was ordered to slay the Lernaean Hydra, a fearsome water-monster with nine serpent-like heads,” Daphne began her story. “Wielding his famous club, Hercules sought to kill the hydra by crushing its heads one by one. But every time one head was destroyed, two new heads would grow in its place. Realising that he could not triumph over the monster with brute force alone, Hercules called for help from his nephew Iolaus. Inspired by Athena, the goddess of wisdom, Iolaus came upon the idea to scorch the neck every time Hercules cut off a head, and so by cauterising the wound, preventing new heads from growing.”

Every gesture of her hands, every carefully chosen word, the smooth relay of events – It was obviously not the first time Daphne told this story, and Simon smiled to himself, imagining a ten-year-old Daphne, reciting the story to her governess, or a sixteen-year old Daphne, delighting her younger siblings with a legend of danger and daring.

He blinked, and it was his Daphne before him once more, finishing her tale.

“And thus Hercules destroyed the hydra – by combining strength, wisdom, cunning and the willingness to ask for help.”

“You have told this story before.”

“To Gregory and Hyacinth.” Daphne smiled and rolled her eyes. “They have a great affinity for stories featuring monsters. The more gruesome the better.”

“And the moral at the end?” He couldn’t help but ask. “Was that for Gregory and Hyacinths benefit as well?”

“And for yours.” The mood in their bedroom turned from playful to profound within a heartbeat.

“Daphne–“

“There is no shame in asking for help, Simon.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Do you truly?”

Instead of his first reflex reply, he considered her words. “Well, I guess I know intellectually. Abandoning the habits of a lifetime and putting that knowledge into practice is a different beast entirely.”

“Then I guess I’ll go first.” His brave little wife, always charging along headfirst.

“Daph–”

“I need your help.” She stared straight into his eyes and Simon could not look away.

“Being a duchess is – it is overwhelming at times. The responsibility of the household, the staff, tenants depending on me, on us, for their livelihoods. At times I feel too naïve, too young, to be in this position. I’m afraid I’ll fail, somehow. Fail you. And that you will wish you had never married me.”

“Daphne, I could never–”

“I’m afraid that I’ll fail as a duchess and that I’ll fail as your wife. All my life, I was trained to be a wife. _A_ wife, not _your_ wife. You said you did not know how to do this. Sometimes, I don’t know either.” A single tear rolled down her cheek and trembled at the beauty mark on her upper lip, before Simon caught it with his thumb. He let out a shaky breath.

“You are a braver soul than I, Daphne Basset,” Simon said, and blinked a few times to fight the moisture in his own eyes. “Thank you, for trusting me with your fears. I promise, I – when I’m able, I’ll trust you with mine.”

She pressed her forehead against his. “I know you will.”

Later, just as Simon was slowly easing into sleep, he felt the quiet whisper of Daphne’s voice against his neck.

“Simon?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ll help you defeat the hydra. Even if it has a thousand heads, I’ll fight it with you.”


End file.
